“Did you see that? ” Jamie said, smiling. “Change is possible! ”
I nodded. “It is impressive.”
We both watched Roscoe go out into the yard and lift his leg against a tree, relieving himself. Never had a simple act resulted in such pride. “Anyway,” Jamie said, “in the end I gave him a check, bought in a bit to the business. It wasn’t that much, really, but when your sister found out, she hit the roof.”
“Cora did?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’s been off him from the start, for some reason. She claims it’s because he always talks about money, but my uncle Ronald does that, too, and him she loves. So go figure.”
I didn’t have to, though. In fact, I was pretty sure I knew exactly why Cora didn’t like Mr. Cross, even if she herself couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Anyway,” Jamie said, “now Blake’s scrambling again, I guess. He’s been hounding me about this new billing idea and the money ever since Thanksgiving, when I asked him about borrowing his oven. I keep putting him off, but man, he’s tenacious. I guess he figures since I’m a sucker, he can pull me in again.”
I had a flash of Olivia on the curb, using this same word. “You’re not a sucker. You’re just nice. You give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“Usually to my detriment,” he said as the phone rang again. We both looked at it: CROSS, BLAKE. The message light was already beeping. “However,” he continued, “other times, people even surpass my expectations. Like you, for instance.”
“Does this mean you’re going to give me a check?” I asked.
“No,” he said flatly. I smiled. “But I am proud of you, Ruby. You’ve come a long way.”
Later, up in my room, I kept thinking about this, the idea of distance and accomplishment. The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. In the end, though, maybe it’s not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.
Middle-school girls, I had learned, moved in packs. If you saw them coming, the best thing to do was step aside and save yourself.
“Look, you guys! These are the ones I was telling you about!” a brown-haired girl wearing all pink, clearly the leader of this particular group, said as they swarmed the kiosk, going straight for the KeyChains. “Oh my God. My brother’s girlfriend has this one, with the pink stones. Isn’t it great?”
“I like the diamond one,” a chubby blonde in what looked like leather pants said. “It’s the prettiest.”
“That’s not a diamond,” the girl in pink told her as their two friends—twins, by the look of their matching red hair and similar features—moved down to the bracelets. “Otherwise, it would be, like, a million dollars.”
“It’s diamonelle,” Harriet corrected her, “and very reasonably priced at twenty-five.”
“Personally,” the brunette said, draping the pink-stoned one across her V-necked sweater, “I like the plain silver. It’s classic, befitting my new, more streamlined, eco-chic look.”
“Eco-chic?” I said.
“Environmentally friendly,” the girl explained. “Green? You know, natural metals, non-conflict stones, minimal but with big impact? All the celebrities are doing it. Don’t you read Vogue?”
“No,” I told her.
She shrugged, taking off the necklace, then moved down the kiosk to her friends, who were now gathered around the rings, quickly dismantling the display I’d just spent a good twenty minutes organizing. “You would think,” I said to Harriet as we watched them take rings on and off, “that they could at least try to put them back. Or pretend to.”
“Oh, let them make a mess,” she said. “It’s not that big a deal cleaning it up.”
“Says the person who doesn’t have to do it.”
She raised her eyebrows at me, walking over to take her coffee off the register. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You’re in a bad mood. What gives?”
“I’m sorry,” I said as the girls finally moved on, leaving rings scattered across the counter behind them. I went over and began to put them away. “I think I’m just stressed or something.”
“Well, it kind of makes sense,” Harriet said, coming over to join me. She put an onyx ring back in place, a red one beside it. “You’re in your final semester, waiting to hear about college, the future is wide open. But that doesn’t necessarily have to get you all bent out of shape. You could look at it as, you know, a great opportunity to embrace stepping out of your comfort zone.”
I stopped what I was doing, narrowing my eyes at her as she filled out another row of rings, calm as you please. “Excuse me?” I said.
“What? ”
I just looked at her, waiting for her to catch the irony. She didn’t. “Harriet,” I said finally, “how long did you have that HELP WANTED sign up before you hired me?”
“Ah,” she said, pointing at me, “but I did hire you, right?”
“And how long did it take you to leave me alone here, to run the kiosk myself?”
“Okay, so I was hesitant,” she admitted. “However, I think you’ll agree that I now leave you fairly often with little trepidation.”
I considered pointing out that the fairly and little spoke volumes. Instead I said, “What about Reggie?”